


Speak Easy To Me

by tothevictorgoesthespoils



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:13:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothevictorgoesthespoils/pseuds/tothevictorgoesthespoils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The evening of Vincent & Rachel's anniversary ends with gruff men, bullets, and a vendetta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak Easy To Me

Rachel was shaking, and soaked to the bone, and potentially bleeding when Vincent carries her to their London townhouse. He uses his fists to pound against the heavy oak gates, and she barely registers the look of alarm that fleets through Tanaka's eyes as Vincent orders him to run a bath. He is breathless and his hands press against her back almost painfully as he carries her up the stairs and towards the tub, his still dripping from the rain. Vincent eases Rachel in as gently as he can manage, with her hands fisted tightly in the heavy wool of his vest, and her delicate lips quivering (he couldn't exactly decipher if it was from the shock or the cold.)

She yelps when the steam of bath water hisses against her thighs, but Vincent is there, still and insistent as he leans in, hovering over her face with uncharacteristically furrowed brows. He starts peelings off the lavender silk plastered to her shoulders and her slender legs. She lifts her head to look at him, eyes blazing and cheeks flushed from feeling undignified, and her body leaning into the contact as his nervous hands (which were also shaking) skims over her pale skin examining for damage. 

Vincent finally lets a long-hissed breath escape through clenched teeth when he finds nothing but a streak of purpled flesh on her collar bone and a small, hairline cut running along her shoulder. As the blood rushing through her veins begins to settle, Rachel suddenly comes to the conclusion that Vincent may have been experiencing the same terror that had been raking through her body as well. 

She does not like being helpless in moments like this, having to depend on someone else for such basic tasks, as she feels Vincent drop the soggy and once-pristine gown. But for this once, as his fingers and warm hands returned to run along her arms, all relieved and silent apprehension tempered, she feels that this was more than bearable. 

Vincent straightens and begins to rise, and Rachel instantaneously reaches her hand out to clasp his upper arm, and opens her mouth to speak-to utter his name, to ask him not to leave her side (because his absence could always become a permanent thing). She reached up to reassure him that it was all right, that she was not as fragile and as delicate as everyone around her assumed, that she was not broken, or perhaps she just wanted to murmur against his neck that she loved him unconditionally (despite the prick of knives or the gunpowder that she always tastes when she breathes him in.) Instead, Rachel let's a tremor run through her like an aftershock, and slides her hand to cup the side of his jaw and lifts her face to kiss him.

She feels the momentary surprise register in his brief reluctance, feels the adrenaline still in his shortened breaths, but she pulls him down towards her. Within moments, she feels his lips crash against her own and joins her in the tub because she hears water crashing around her and suddenly there is warmth again in her world. Rachel can hardly draw breath because Vincent Phantomhive tastes like brandy aged in cedar casks, and smoke, and iron, and of something not-quite-polite she sometimes catches in his smiles, the tenor of his voice, in the hitch of his breaths. Vincent Phantomhive is a man of walking complexities, an elaborate laybrinth that Rachel has been treading through with each passing day. But her husband also tastes of respite, of warm, of devotion, of tenderness. Vincent tastes like benevolence and is ever the gentleman that lesser men can only aspire to be (even as sheds himself of his shirt and his lips trail down her collar bone). Vincent presses himself further into her, closer, long fingers pressing against the small of her neck, tangling into her hair-falling lose and wet onto her shoulders.

Afterwards, when Vincent moves to speak, deflated yet contented, Rachel lets soft breath of a laugh escape from her lips. She knows he wants to apologize, to lament how the anniversary of their second year of marriage in London ends with gruff men brandishing bullets and harboring a vendetta. 

She stops those words from materializing with a soft kiss, still laughing, still a little breathless. “I wouldn’t make for a very suitable wife of the Earl Phantomhive if I couldn’t improvise a little, now, would I?” 

His mouth curves against her own, and he laughs, deep and happy and simply charmed. It was a laugh that was inexplicably genuine and uncalculated, but still just a little too satisfied and smug for his own good. Rachel, however, was just too tired and too happy to be back in arms, safe, and warm again to let herself be exasperated by it.

**Author's Note:**

> I rehashed and re-edited a headcanon from my Vincent RP account at tumblr. Vincent is one of my favorite characters, and I'm constantly frustrated by the lack of attention on him (yet inspired heavily by the little information and fanwork there has been.) There's so much potential and danger and mystery and Vincent is just brimming with it. Anyways, enjoy and any criticism or comment would be appreciated. Thank you. :) 
> 
> -tothevictorgoesthespoils


End file.
